Below are some observations about the nature of our language and how it is changing. Here is a sentence that contains several examples of language evolution.
“If you use Google’s” laser “and the interface that it defines with the tangebalized results we already have, we can destroy the vegetables :)”
The sentence above contains several ways our language is changing: a new spelling (u), a noun turned into a verb (google), a compound (interface), an abbreviation (def), an adjective that has been turned into a verb (tangibalized), an abbreviation that has become a word (nuke), slang (vegetables), and a new punctuation mark – :).
But then our language has been changing since the first growl. Try this:
“She was a dignified woman to hir lyve, housbondes in chirche-dore she had five, wuthouten another companion in youthe, but of that she needs nat to speak as nouthe”.
Chaucer wrote this verse, but this is how Christopher Columbus spoke and wrote a few years after Chaucer’s death in 1400.
How about “I have milk?” Or “I fired her.” Neither Chaucer nor Colón would have understood it. The first is a grammatical error and the second is a mispronunciation of “asked”, which is now creeping into written language as “axed”. Whether these current use cases become permanent has yet to be decided, but then who thought that “9/11” would come to mean anything more than 9/11, and that a toilet plunger would be called a “toilet bowl?” water jet force “(US Exercise).
Here are some ways the language is changing, and some of them will become permanent, if they haven’t already.
1. The use of pompous or ambiguous jargon.
AT&T used the noble “customer in / out access facility” to describe
your windows of complaints. The White House called the invasion of Granada a “vertical insertion before dawn.” We like to bother with the Pentagon because it is so creative. When they say “conveniently neutralize the opponent,” they mean shoot first, buddy. The Pentagon refers to combat as “prosecution of violence” and “permanent pre-hostilities” means peace, bro. “Collateral damage” means killing our allies by accident.
But let’s not forget business and industry. Shell Oil called its gas station attendants “hydrocarbon transfer specialists,” and there are no longer any janitors because they are all called maintenance engineers (and they don’t have an engineering degree together). Most companies don’t have mail rooms, they have document distribution centers. The salesmen and women are the correct “associates”, which avoids gender identification, but it appears that they own part of the business. Maybe that’s the point.
2. The compression of words into acronyms and abbreviations.
Does anyone remember what diving means? We don’t bother capitalizing on it, but
It means Underwater Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus. How about “laser”? It means amplification of light by stimulated emission of radiation. The zip code in the zip code stands for Zone Upgrade Program and POSH stands for “port out, starboard back,” which are the best cabins on a ship.
If we start putting compressions together, we come across phrases like this one from Amoco Oil. “To access GPNU2, @ADD the source file TEXDIS * TEMPLATES.GPNU2 while in PARSD.” Excusez moi? And from Northrop Aviation we found this procedure: “The program was loaded into the CMS and compiled with Fortran Compliers rs (FORTUS), GICFTG and H Extended (FHX).
3. The slang epidemic
Slang is so common that people don’t even realize you’re using it. “Reoccupation” is
not a word, not his more famous cousin “no matter”. I have heard people in high-class business meetings say “guestimate” seriously and “evergreen” to mean continually updated or improved.
In everyday language, we hear other slang words like “bummer”, “framistant”, “diddlysquat”, “cockamayme”, “disambiguate” and, of course, “veggies”, which is what “vegans” eat. “LOL has now hit the verbal language.
4. Converting words into new words
Composition begins when two words are used together so often that
they are divided with hyphens. After a few years of hyphenation, the hyphen is removed and a new word appears on the street. The “downtime” became “downtime” and is now “downtime”. There are endless combinations: “greenmail”, “meltdown”, “airhead”, “proactive” and “scam”, to name a few.
We like to put “mega” in front of almost any word: “megabucks”, “mega trend”, “megastar”, “megabyte” and “megamillionaire”. We also put “ultra” in front of the words: “ultralite”, “ultrafine” or “ultraswede”, and we put “anti” anywhere: “anti-terrorist”, “anti-discrimination”, “anti-war”, “anti-marriage”. etc.
Finally, we like to highlight “at the end” of many words that are intended for ourselves: “far away”, “kissing”, “veg out”, “pig out”, “freak out”, “burned”, “police “out”, “zoned out”, “disgust” and “chill out” to name a few. Some of these will be divided with hyphens, then a word over time.
5. New definitions of old words and new foreign words
It all depends on how you say it. “bad” if you mean bad, and “baaad” if you mean
well. “Anchor” used to stop boats, “wiring” meant wiring in a house or elsewhere, “heavy” used to mean heavy, and “garbage” meant something that was placed on the sidewalk. The “meat market” did not mean a place to meet beautiful girls, “stoning” was a medieval form of execution still practiced today in some third world countries, and “crunching” was what Rice Krispies did. “Cold” means temperature.
We are ingesting foreign words at a record rate. Anything on a Mexican restaurant menu is a new American word, “glitch” is a German word, and “skoosh” is a Japanese word. Globalization, for the next 1000 years, will make us all speak the same language.
6. Converting nouns and adjectives into verbs
Tomorrow we will give status to the drawings ”(Bectel).
“Infers well with customers” (IBM).
“During phase 2 we will reorient the program (Boeing Aircraft).
“The power line was built in isolation to please the owners” (US Forest Service).
All of these sentences were drawn from actual documents used in writing.
Also, on the side of a truck is “Pofessionalized in Damage-Free Towing”, “This report will define an answer” from Martin Marrieta, and “The routine has begun” from ARCO Oil. “Rugged” stands for heavy duty reinforcement at the BLM, and from Cameron Iron Works: “The entire program should be absolute.” Shiny.
7. Regionalism
If you “live under the bridge,” you live south of the Mackinaw River.
Bridge, and if you want a big sandwich, you have to know what to order: a “wimp” in the Northeast, a “hoagie” in Philadelphia, a “submarine” in New York, a “po boy” in Louisiana, a “hero” in the southwest and a “blimp” in San Francisco. If you’re “grocery shopping” in Louisiana, you’ve been to the grocery store and depending on where you are, you will be killed for calling someone a “jerk” or congratulated on recognizing a really nice guy. Getting a soda can be a challenge, depending on where you are. In some parts of the county, “coke” means anything cold, after which you specify which cold drink you want, and then there are “sodas,” “sodas,” “sodas,” and “sodas.”
8. The invention of idioms
“It blew my mind that you were chewing the fat and shooting the bull with it
hacker. But tell me, because if you want to be off the wall and spend an arm and a leg getting polished, let me water the horse and I’ll join you. “
That sentence is made up entirely of idioms. In business, people “massage the numbers” and catch up. In the trucking industry, if someone says their coffee has been “stir fry and blown,” it means they are ready to drink. In the government they talk about “increased income”, which means that they are going to raise our taxes.
In 1942 Eric Partridge in his book “Usage and Abusage” said: “The field of language is strewn with the dry bones of adventurous words that once began with a fatherly blessing to make a fortune, but have met an untimely end. and they only serve, when collected, to fill the shelves of a lexicographical museum “.
Changes in verbal language occur with astonishing speed. Some of that language, if kept long enough and used often enough, eventually gets used in written language. Some appear in dictionaries. However, just because a word appears in a dictionary does not mean that it will remain there. Old words fly off the pages and unused words fly after them. Dictionaries evolve, as does language. The cautious ones keep a 1932 copy of the Encyclopaedia Britannica on their shelves because it has scholarly articles rather than definitions like modern encyclopedias, which are expanded dictionaries with lots of color images, and they throw away last year’s dictionary with the year’s phone book. last.
Business, industry and government writers, at the managerial level and above, must be careful about using words that may detract from their professional demeanor. Poor use of the word can lead to ridicule among associates and distract from a good education and excellent talents.